Category: Buying Guide

You need one air purifier for each closed room where people spend long hours, starting with the bedrooms. A typical 2BHK is well covered by two units, one in each bedroom, and a 3BHK usually ends up with three, though you can start with two and add the third later. Measure your rooms before you buy: their size and how you use them decide the count, not the label on the flat.

The Short Answer

An air purifier cleans the air of the room it sits in, and it does that well only when the room is closed. It does not send clean air through walls, and it barely reaches a bedroom down the corridor. So the useful question is not “how big is my flat?” but “which closed rooms do we spend long stretches in, and when?”

Answer that and the count usually becomes obvious. Two people in a 2BHK who sleep in one room and work in the other need two units. A family of four in a 3BHK with children in their own room needs three. A couple who sleep with the door shut and spend evenings in an open living-dining area may need two, one for each space. If you are still working out how big a purifier one room needs, start with our air purifier size guide; this guide is about covering the whole home.

Which Rooms to Cover First

Rank rooms by how many hours people spend in them with the door shut, and by who those people are. A sensible order for most Indian homes:

1. The bedrooms people sleep in. Seven or eight unbroken hours, door closed, windows often shut against the cold or the mosquitoes. This is where a purifier has the easiest job and the longest run. Start with the room of anyone who is very young, older, or living with a breathing condition, then the main bedroom. Our guide to choosing a bedroom air purifier covers what to look for in that first unit.
2. The room where the family spends evenings. Usually the living room or the living-dining area, from the time people come home until bedtime. In winter, evenings are also when outdoor air in many north Indian cities starts to worsen again.
3. A study or home office. If someone works from home in a closed room for a full day, that room deserves its own unit sooner than you might expect.
4. Everything else. Guest rooms, a puja room used for a few minutes, passages and utility areas rarely need a dedicated purifier.

The kitchen is a special case. Cooking smoke and oil fumes are best removed at source by a chimney or exhaust fan. A purifier in the living area nearby can help with what drifts out, but it is not a substitute for extraction while you cook.

One Unit per Room, or Move One Around?

Moving one purifier between rooms is a legitimate way to start, as long as you are honest about what it can do. A purifier needs time to bring a room’s particle level down after it arrives, so it helps most when it is already in place before you use the room.

• Moving works when rooms are used at different times: living room in the evening, then carried into the bedroom an hour or so before bed, door shut. Many purifiers are light enough for this, and a Sleep mode keeps it gentle overnight.
• Moving struggles when two rooms are occupied at the same time, such as children asleep in one room and parents in another. One unit cannot be in both.
• Moving is a chore. In practice, many people stop doing it after a couple of weeks and the unit stays wherever it was last placed. If you know your household, plan for that.
• One per room is simpler. Each closed room gets its own unit running on Auto, each sensor reports its own room, and nobody carries anything.

How Many for a 1BHK, 2BHK and 3BHK

Indian flats vary widely. One builder’s 2BHK has two compact bedrooms and a small hall; another’s has a large open living-dining area bigger than both bedrooms together. That is why the table below gives an order of priority, not room sizes. Measure each room you plan to cover, length by width and ceiling height, and run the numbers through the air purifier size calculator before you decide on the count.

Two adjustments to the table. First, if a “bedroom” is used only by visitors a few nights a year, drop it to the bottom of the list. Second, if anyone at home has a doctor’s advice to keep their exposure low, their room moves to the top, whatever its size.

Open-Plan Living and Dining Areas

Many newer flats join the living room, dining area and sometimes the kitchen into one long space. Air does not stop at the back of the sofa, so treat that whole stretch as one room when you measure it. Add the lengths together, include the dining area, and if the kitchen has no door, include it too.

Two things then decide the count:

• Total area. If the combined space is within what one purifier is designed for, one unit placed centrally, with clear space around it, can do the job.
• Shape. An L-shaped or very long room has corners the airflow from one unit reaches slowly. For open-plan spaces larger than about 484 sq ft, two units placed apart, one at each end, usually do better than one unit working alone.

Open areas also tend to have more openings: balcony doors, the main door, a kitchen window. Every gap lets outdoor air in. Our guide to an air purifier for a large room or living room goes deeper on placement in big spaces.

Doors Closed vs Doors Open

The count above assumes doors are shut. When every internal door stays open, the flat behaves more like one large volume, and the air in each room mixes slowly with the others. A single purifier in the hall then works on the air of the whole flat, which spreads its effort thin, and the bedrooms at the far end benefit very little.

A few habits make any number of units work harder:

• Close bedroom doors at night while the purifier runs. This is the single biggest lever.
• Keep windows shut when the outdoor AQI is high, and air the home briefly when it dips. Check the reading for your city on the AQI by city page.
• Do not count on a purifier in a corridor to clean the rooms off it. Put units inside the rooms people use.
• Mind the bathroom door in an en-suite bedroom: an exhaust fan running with the door open pulls in air from outside the room.

Phasing the Budget Over a Season

You do not have to buy for the whole flat at once. A phased plan over one season works well:

1. Before the bad-air months, buy the first unit for the bedroom that matters most. Run it on Auto for a week and watch how quickly the room’s reading falls with the door shut.
2. As the season worsens, add the second unit for the next bedroom or the living area, based on what the first unit taught you about your home.
3. Once you know the pattern, decide whether a third unit is needed or whether moving one between rooms is enough for your family.

Remember the running side too. Every unit has filters that need replacing when they are used up, and a purifier in polluted air uses its filter faster than one in cleaner air. More units means more filters over the years, so buy the number you will actually keep running. A money-back period is useful here: it lets you test the first unit in your own home before you commit to more.

Where Boon Airvana Fits

Boon Airvana is built around the room-by-room approach this guide recommends. It covers rooms up to about 484 sq ft, and in a 12 × 12 ft bedroom it gives more than nine air changes an hour, which leaves headroom to run on a lower speed overnight. For open-plan spaces larger than about 484 sq ft, two Airvana units placed apart usually do better than one.

• 1 air purifier, 2 H13 HEPA filters, 8 sensors: dual-suction draws air in from both sides, through a HEPA filter on each side.
• Each unit reads its own room with AtmoScan sensing, so you can see which room lags behind and decide whether it needs a unit of its own.
• Auto-learn in the Boon app learns your routine and starts purifying before you get home, and scheduling helps a unit that serves the living room by evening and the bedroom by night.
• A change-filter reminder arrives when the filter is due, based on the air it has handled rather than a fixed calendar.

Airvana is ₹14,900 at the time of writing, with Boon’s 10-day money-back guarantee, which makes it easy to start with one unit and add the next once you have seen the readings.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many air purifiers do I need for a 2BHK?

Most 2BHK homes are well served by two air purifiers, one in each bedroom used for sleeping or working. You can start with one in the main bedroom and move it to the living room in the evening, but if two rooms are occupied at the same time, each needs its own unit. Measure the rooms first, because flat sizes vary widely.

How many air purifiers do I need for a 3BHK?

A 3BHK usually needs two units to start, for the main bedroom and the children’s or elders’ room, and three or four for full coverage, adding the third bedroom or study and the living-dining area. A large open-plan living area may need two units placed apart. Measure each room and use a size calculator before deciding.

Can one air purifier clean a whole house?

Not well. A purifier cleans the air of the room it sits in, and works best with the door closed. With all doors open, one unit spreads its effort across the whole flat and the far rooms benefit very little. Put purifiers inside the rooms people use for long hours, starting with bedrooms.

Is it OK to move an air purifier from room to room?

Yes, if rooms are used at different times, such as the living room in the evening and the bedroom at night. Move it into the next room an hour or so before you use it and close the door. It does not work when two rooms are occupied at the same time, and many people stop moving it after a few weeks.

Which room should get an air purifier first?

The bedroom, because people spend seven or eight unbroken hours there with the door closed. Start with the room of anyone very young, older or with a breathing condition, then the main bedroom. Next comes the room where the family spends evenings, then a home office if someone works from home all day.

Do I need two air purifiers for a large living room?

It depends on the size and shape. Measure the whole open-plan space, including the dining area and any kitchen without a door. If it is larger than what one unit is designed for, or very long or L-shaped, two units placed apart usually work better than one. For Boon Airvana, that point is about 484 sq ft.